Amy Senser sentenced to 41 months for hit-and-run death

The family of Anousone Phanthavong enters the Hennepin County Government Center before the sentencing hearing for Amy Senser on Monday, July 9, 2012. (Pioneer Press: John Doman)

Moments before a judge was to sentence her, in a Minneapolis courthouse hallway away from the eyes of reporters or the prosecutor or even her own defense attorney, Amy Senser quietly approached the mother of the man she killed.

"I'm so sorry," Senser told Keo Phanthavong; the two mothers shared a cry.

It was a private follow-up to another quiet gesture the Edina woman had made on Father's Day. That evening, she walked into True Thai, the Minneapolis restaurant where her victim, Anousone Phanthavong, had been head chef. As the place fell silent, she dropped off a bouquet of white peace lilies -- white is the Buddhist color of mourning -- and a large fruit basket with a simple note that read, "Anousone Family.

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Senser, 45, was sentenced to three years and five months in prison Monday, July 9, for the hit-and-run death of Phanthavong last August. In delivering her punishment, Hennepin County District Judge Daniel Mabley said he believed that the woman's remorse was genuine but that she had yet to accept responsibility for her actions.

The 70-minute hearing was filled with tears, legal arguments and expressions of Buddhist and Christian concepts of forgiveness and sorrow. As the dead man's boss told the judge in a victim-impact statement, Phanthavong, a devout Buddhist, would forgive Senser.

"Buddha said, 'Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned,'" the boss, Anna Prasomphol Fieser, wrote in her statement, which was read by the victim's brother.

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Senser seemed tearfully penitent. Given a chance to speak before sentencing, the wife of former Viking-turned-restaurateur Joe Senser (who was absent) tried with little success to compose herself before she turned to face Phanthavong's parents and family seated in the row just behind her.

"This isn't about me, and I've waited a long time to say I'm sorry," she said through tears, looking them in the eyes. Her sobs were heavy at times, and her tears seemed to prompt tears from Phanthavong's family, too.

"I don't know what pain I have caused. I can only imagine you must miss him," said Senser, who has two teenage daughters of her own.

"I just hope someday you can forgive me for taking your son from you," she said to Keo Phanthavong and her husband, Phouxay Phanthavong. "I'm so very sorry."

After Mabley pronounced sentence, the woman who had so far avoided spending any time in jail -- save for a brief in-and-out processing when originally charged -- entered a whirlwind. She was booked into jail at 10:30 a.m., left for the state prison in Shakopee at 12:10 p.m. and arrived there at 12:40 p.m.

By 1:30 p.m., her prison mug shot and offender data were posted on the Minnesota Department of Corrections' website. It noted that inmate No.

July 9, 2012 courtesy photo of Amy Margaret Senser. Senser, 45, the wife of restaurateur and former Minnesota Viking Joe Senser, was sentenced to three years and five months in prison on Monday, July 9, 2012 following her conviction on two counts of criminal vehicular homicide in the death of Anousone Phanthavong, the man she killed with her SUV the night of Aug. 23, 2011, in Minneapolis. Photo courtesy of the Hennepin County Sheriff's Dept.

238360's anticipated release date is Oct. 20, 2014.

Minnesota inmates generally serve two-thirds of their sentence behind bars before they are let out on supervised release.

Senser was convicted of two counts of criminal vehicular homicide in the death of Phanthavong, 38, on Aug. 23.

The Roseville man was driving to True Thai that night, as he usually did on his day off to give the late-night cleaning crew a ride home. On the way, he ran out of gas and his car rolled to a stop on the Riverside Avenue exit ramp of westbound Interstate 94.

As he stood next to his car refilling the tank, Senser struck him with her Mercedes-Benz ML350 SUV. He was thrown 50 feet and died at the scene.

At her trial in April, Senser said she didn't stop because she didn't see him and didn't know she had hit a person or a vehicle. She thought the sound she heard -- a "clunk," as she described it for the jury -- was her SUV hitting a pothole or a construction barricade.

The I-didn't-see-him theme was one she brought up when she addressed the family.

"I hope you can believe me that I never saw your son that night, and if I had, I would've stopped," she said.

"I don't know what else to say other than I hope you can forgive me," she said at the end of her five-minute statement.

Her attorney, Eric Nelson, made a last-minute plea for probation, saying his client "is not a monster" and has "lived a life of tremendous responsibility."

He also said Senser had Phanthavong's first name tattooed on her wrist as a permanent reminder of the life she'd taken. (The tattoo, on her left wrist, was not readily visible in court, hidden by the cuff of her dark gray two-piece suit.)

Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Deborah Russell, though, told the judge that Senser still wasn't taking responsibility for what she'd done and that a punishment near the sentencing guidelines' maximum of 57 months was appropriate.

She said that the morning after the crash, Senser and her husband surveyed the bloodstained damage to the Mercedes and faced the realization she may have been involved in a terrible accident -- and Senser returned to the back patio to finish her morning coffee.

"That event encapsulates the fact that this defendant has never accepted the responsibility that she caused Mr. Phanthavong's death," Russell told the judge.

Mabley agreed the woman's words and deeds had come up short in that regard. He said Senser had never provided "an adequate explanation" for why she didn't see Phanthavong or stop after she struck him.

He said he had trouble believing she would not have seen the man, dressed in a white T-shirt and standing next to a car whose emergency flashers were blinking.

Mabley also said he couldn't understand why she waited so long to contact police. Her lawyer turned the damaged vehicle over to the Minnesota State Patrol nearly 24 hours after the crash, and she didn't acknowledge she'd been driving until 10 days after the crash -- and she came forward only after a stepdaughter threatened to go to police.

"There are just too many family secrets and a lack of candor, and I don't trust her account," Mabley said of Senser's version of what happened that night.

He said he believed her remorse "is true," but that there was a distinction between remorse and accepting responsibility. While she may have been "panicked and confused" in the immediate aftermath, those feelings ebbed but "the avoidance of responsibility remained."

The judge also said a significant sentence was required as a deterrent against an "epidemic" of hit-and-run driving in Minnesota, and that the publicity her case has generated will send a strong signal to others who might consider fleeing the scene of a crash.

In victim-impact statements, family members related parts of Phanthavong's odyssey -- born in war-torn Laos where his father had served in the Royal Lao Army and fought alongside the CIA, staying behind to care for his grandfather when his parents came to America and then immigrating here himself in his teens.

"My uncle was the kindest, most gentle person you could ever hope to meet," said Sayaphone Phouthavongsay, a niece.

The victim's only brother, Khonevichith Phanthavong, said the two of them dreamed of opening a restaurant together, and he was disturbed that Senser hadn't expressed sorrow.

"The convicted has shown little or no remorse, or no sympathy," he told the judge. "She doesn't know what she's taken away from us."

As the family members spoke, Senser began sobbing, sometimes loudly. Seated next to her at the counsel table, Nelson leaned over and rubbed her back with his left hand. Later, in his plea for probation, he told Mabley that his client had grieved Phanthavong's death, and said: "I know she will carry him with her the rest of her life."

After Mabley pronounced his sentence, the hearing ended, Senser went up to Keo Phanthavong, clasped the woman's hand in hers and said she was sorry.